


Unforgettable: A Series of Project Blue Book Vingettes

by JDSampson



Series: 'UN'forgettable Moments [1]
Category: Project Blue Book (TV)
Genre: A little bit of everything, Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Epic Bromance, Fluff, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-01
Updated: 2019-06-02
Packaged: 2020-04-06 03:48:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19054624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JDSampson/pseuds/JDSampson
Summary: A series of memorable moments from the life of Michael Quinn and Allen Hynek - all spun around words that start with "un"





	1. UnDone (June 1)

**Author's Note:**

> I've been so inspired by Pentopella's short prompt pieces, I decided to challenge myself to write short! At the moment, high bromance, not slash but that could change. Will warn. Enjoy!

**Prompt: Undone**

 

“Before it was Istanbul.”

Just breathing as an answer.

“Doc, come on. Fourteen letters. Before it was Istanbul.”

“Do you really need me to tell you that one?” Allen’s voice came through the intercom, tired and crackling.

“Fine, it’s Constantinople,” said Quinn, his voice traveling back through the intercom to the other room. “But I can’t spell it.”

“C-O-N-S-T-A-N-T-I-N-O-P-L-E.”

Quinn filled the word in on the crossword puzzle. Four more to go.

“A proclamation. 5 letters, starts with E.”

A sigh. “I don’t want to do this anymore.”

“Come on, I can’t sleep. I need something to occupy my mind.” Which was a complete and total lie. Allen was the one who couldn’t sleep; who needed to keep his mind occupied. Quinn had learned how to sleep almost anywhere at any time when he was a pilot during the war. And right now, he was so damned tired, he’d be asleep in the next five minutes if he let himself go. But then Allen would have no one to talk to and that wouldn’t do.

Quinn dropped the newspaper and pencil on the bed, then rolled to his side to face the table with the intercom. “A proclamation. 5 letters, starts with E.”

Allen coughed and Quinn’s heart skipped a beat.

“A proclamation. 5 letters, starts with E. Come on, Doc.”

“Edict,” even softer now followed by another cough.

“A six-letter word for a turtle.” Quinn swung his legs over the side of the bed and slowly got to his feet. The floor felt like it was bending beneath him but that was just exhaustion, dehydration. “A six-letter word for a turtle.” Three steps was all it took to get to the wall. He pressed his palms against it then leaned in, so his forehead was touching, too.

“Tortoise,” said Allen. “But that’s eight letters.”

“My mistake,” Quinn said quickly. “I miscounted. You’re right. It’s tortoise. Spell it.”

Allen did. Quinn wrote the word on the wall with his finger. He was running out of steam.

Allen coughed again and this time with such ferocity it made Quinn’s throat hurt just to hear it.

“Doc. Stay with me.” Quinn pressed his shoulder to the wall then slid to the floor. “What’s the name of that constellation that looks like a W?”

The coughing had stopped but each breath was accompanied by a whistling wheeze.

No. No. No.

“It’s a girl’s name. Right? The W one. Some Greek lady. What is it?”

“Cassiopeia. Michael—”

“Hey. No. Don’t you Michael me.” Quinn turned to press his back to the wall. He pulled his knees to his chest and circled them with his arms. It was cold on the floor, but he was closer. Only a few feet closer, but it mattered. “I told you not to touch that jar. But you can’t ever listen. You always have to do things your way.”

“Scientific curiosity. Can’t help it.” A horrible wheeze and more coughing.

Quinn banged his head back against the wall. He wanted to break through, to get to the other side. Just hearing each other wasn’t enough. He needed to see. Needed to touch.

Not going to happen. His door was locked from the outside.

Not to keep you in, they said. To make sure no one enters by accident. Not without a mask and gloves and a gown.

Quarantine.

He dropped his head to his knees, exhaustion pulling him down. “God, Doc. How could you do this to me.”

Allen coughed again with another sound that Quinn thought was blood coming up.

 “Do this to you? You’re not sick. You haven’t coughed once.”

“That’s what I mean. You bastard, you’re going to leave me behind.”

The next noise was too horrible to catalog as a mere cough. Then new voices over the intercom. A doctor talking to a nurse, voices muffled by masks and the static. Unintelligible. But it wasn’t good.

Quinn pressed his palms back behind him, against the wall as the tears began to fall. “Don’t you dare leave me behind, Doc. Not now. Not after all we’ve been through. Fight, damn it. Fight.”

Allen didn’t answer and Quinn came undone.

  
The End.

 


	2. Unbutton

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Second Story in my "Unforgettable" series has Quinn and Hynek fussing over some unbudgeable buttons.

**June 2: Unbutton**

 

“Captain! I have a Ph.D. in astrophysics, and I worked at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab for five years. I think I know how to unbutton a few buttons.”

“This isn’t about brains. This is about dexterity.” Quinn got his hands into the mix again only to be swatted away by Hynek.

“You have no patience.”

“Me? Are you kidding?” Quinn went back to his own desk, plucked his lit cigarette out of the ashtray and took a puff. “I am the most patient man on the planet. I once spent two hours sitting in a hard lecture hall chair while you dumped your entire brain on to a chalkboard. I have spent countless hours in a car, driving way out of our way just so you can satisfy your curiosity. And let’s not even talk about how many times I’ve had to retype a report because you weren’t happy with the way I wrote it. I am so patient with you, I should a get a medal.”

“And that’s another reason why you need to keep your hands off my buttons.”

Quinn blinked and looked behind him – clearly, he’d missed something. “What is?”

“That cigarette you’re perpetually smoking. You have nicotine on your fingers which could stain the buttons or leave a smell behind. They’re very old and very delicate.”

Quinn snorted which got an eyebrow rise out of Hynek.

“I may be old, but I’m not delicate.” The button wasn’t budging.

Quinn perched his hip on the edge of his desk. “I wouldn’t say you were old. Old-ER, yes but not old. Except when it comes to the music you listen to. . . and that coat you’re overly attached to. . . and the way you get all crotchety when it’s past your bedtime.” Drag, blow. Smoke into the air. “I take it back. You are old. Now will you just let me unbutton the damn thing already?”

Allen sighed. He hated giving up. It was admitting defeat, and this was particularly brutal. How could something so simple as a button beat Doctor Allen Hynek? But it was silly to drag this out a moment longer. Plus, the rising frustration in both of them was sucked all the fun out of what came next.

Might as well salvage something out of all of this, some moment of joy.

“Fine. You do it.” Allen dramatically threw his hands in the air giving Quinn all the room he needed to attack the buttons.

“I have a lot of experience unbuttoning other people’s buttons,” Quinn said suggestively and was pleased to see a blush rise in Allen’s cheeks. He was so easy to push.

Cigarette in one hand, Quinn manipulated the first button with his free hand. This way. That way. The damned thing would not slip through the buttonhole. He could feel the ‘I told you so’ rising inside of Allen, so he put his cigarette down and set upon the task in earnest.

It was as if the hole had shrunk or the button had grown. Stupid.

“Why don’t we just cut the buttons off already!”

“No!” Allen recoiled in horror. “In spite of what the military taught you, brute force is not always the answer. We need to look at this scientifically. Understand the problem and formula a solution.”

“This is ridiculous.” Quinn made a grab and Allen spun, bouncing him off his shoulder like blocker in a basketball game. “Will you stop and let me do it already!”

“No!” Shouted with that odd, rounding of the word that was so Allen Hynek.

“Yes!” Quinn shouted back.

“What is going on in here!” Faye.

They both turned toward the new voice, each pointing at the other like two kids caught standing over a broken cookie jar. ‘He did it’.

Faye dropped a stack of papers on Quinn’s desk. “For your signature,” she said, then she approached Hynek’s desk and surveyed the situation. “Brains and brawn and you still can’t crack open a child’s schoolbag?”

“It’s the leather,” said Allen. “It’s dried up.”

Another snort of a laugh from Quinn.

“I haven’t opened it since I was a child. It’s been buttoned up tight for almost 30 years.”

“More like 40 years,” said Quinn which earned him a nasty look from Hynek.

Faye sighed, the overworked, under appreciated mother. She waved for them both to step aside then she took hold of the leather strap on one side of the pouch and gave it a bend this way and that. Then she worked the large wooden button through the stiff hole in the leather. It went through easily.

She did the same on the other side, then threw back both straps and folded back the flap on the schoolbag.

“We started it for you,” said Quinn sheepishly.

“And you have fingernails,” said Allen showing off his lack of same.

Quinn made a grab for the bag, but Faye beat him to it. “I opened it; I get first look.” She reached in and pulled out an old photograph. “Aww, so darling. Doctor Hynek, is this you?”

The fading, yellowing photo showed a handsome but severe looking woman in a black dress with a white ruffle around the neck. Her hair was parted down the middle and pulled into a bun in the back. She was sitting in a large, fan-back chair and there was a child in her lap. The child was no more than 3 and he / she was wearing a sailor suit with bloomers that made it hard to tell if it was a boy or a girl. The expression on both of their faces was dower.

“That’s me and my mother,” Allen confirmed.

“What is with that look on your face?” said Quinn. “You’re a baby and you’re already way too serious.”

“I think it’s darling,” said Faye.

Quinn dipped his hand into the bag and pulled out a sheaf of papers tied together with yarn stitching down one side.

‘My Book of Stars’ : Written in the lopsided hand of a child.

“Good lord, you have been obsessed since birth.” Quinn flipped the pages. They were filled with childish drawings of constellations with badly spelled names under each one. The last page was a set of stars making up a crude, child’s version of a face. The constellation name was Babicka followed by a heart.

“Babicka?” Quinn asked.

“Czech for grandmother,” said Allen.

“Oh, that is adorable!” Quinn said while Faye offered another ‘aww’.

Allen pulled the booklet from the Captain’s hands. “I was five years old and my mother said she went to heaven.”

“So, you made her into a constellation up in the sky?” Faye was actually crying now. “That is the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“I can’t believe you were making your own science textbooks when you were five,” Quinn said and it sounded like a grumble.

“What were you making when you were five?” said Allen.

“A mess, mostly. I was into mud and I vaguely recall an incident with my father’s shaving razor and the family dog.”

“Your poor mother,” said Faye.

“Mother,” said Allen absently. He had a handkerchief to his nose. It was dainty with a lace edge and flowers embroidered in the corner. “Narcisse Noir. My father bought her a bottle as a birthday gift and she never wore anything else. It’s like orange blossom but spicy.”

He offered the handkerchief to both Faye and Quinn to have a sniff. The scent was barely there but even the small hint hit Allen hard in the heart. “This is what my mother smelled like.”

He brought the handkerchief back to his own nose and inhaled deeply. “She was a school teacher and she always said I was destined to do something great for this world. I’m sure this,” he motioned to the Project Blue Book wall of weird, “isn’t what she had in mind.”

Quinn set a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “You followed in her footsteps. You teach and not just the students at the University. You teach entire towns full of people every time we go out to investigate a case. And you’ve taught me plenty. I now know how many stars there are in sky and how meteors are formed and what a parallax equation is. She’d be very proud of the man you’ve become.”

Allen put the handkerchief back into the school bag along with the photo and the book of stars and the other drawings and writings he’d found inside. He’d go over them with more care at home. Right now, it was too hard. He closed the flap and rebuttoned the two buttons that held the straps in place.

“If you don’t need me,” he said, around an unexpected lump in his throat. “I’m going to go home.”

Quinn gave Allen’s shoulder a squeeze. “I always need you, Doc. But we can call it done for the night. Tomorrow’s another day.”

“With any luck, it will be.” Allen picked up his own ‘grownup’ briefcase as well as the school bag, grabbed his coat and hat and left the office.

Faye circled Allen’s desk and spent the next few moments tiding the bits of paper and stray supplies while Quinn went back to his own desk to sign the paperwork she’d brought in earlier.

“I know he can be obstinate and demanding,” Faye said, almost talking to herself. “But I’m glad he joined us.”

“I am, too,” Quinn said as he signed, signed, signed.

 

The End


End file.
